Dyspraxia

WHAT IS DYSPRAXIA?

The word "dyspraxia" comes from the Greek word "dys" meaning "difficulty with" and the word "praxis", meaning "acting or doing".

Dyspraxia (also known as Developmental Dyspraxia) is an impairment or immaturity of the organisation of movement. Associated with this there may be problems of language, perception and thought.

Research indicates that up to one in 20 children suffer from the condition with boys identified four times more frequently than girls. It would therefore seem reasonable to suppose that there is at least one child in each class at school with Dyspraxia and in specialist provision for pupils with extreme emotional and behavioural difficulties the incidence is likely to be more than 50%.

Many people think of Dyspraxia as the 'Clumsy Child' Syndrome. Experts have described Developmental Dyspraxia as the difficulty in 'getting our bodies to do what we want when we want them to do it'. This difficulty can be considered significant when it interferes with the normal range of activities expected for a child of their age.

Gross and fine motor skills are hard to learn, difficult to retain and generalise, and hesitant and awkward in performance. Speech articulation may be immature or even unintelligible in early years. Language may be impaired or late to develop.

There can also be poor understanding of the messages that the senses convey and difficulty in relating those messages to actions. Dyspraxic children of normal intelligence may have great difficulty in planning and organising thoughts. Those with moderate learning difficulties may have these problems to a greater extent.

For most children there is no known cause, although Dyspraxia is thought to be an immaturity of neurone development in the brain rather than brain damage. Dyspraxic children usually have no clinical neurological abnormality to explain their condition.

Dyspraxia is part of a continuum of related disorders and may also be present in people with Autism, Dyslexia and Dyscalculia, among others.

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